I had a call this morning from a customer who wanted me to come down because their mail server was broken. They had experienced an ISP outage, which subsequently was fixed, but their mail server wasn't getting anything still. I was actually ready to go out the door when I thought to just double check reality, and that check kept me sitting right here:

- I had a call this morning from a customer who wanted me to come down because their mail server was broken. They had experienced an ISP outage, which subsequently was fixed, but their mail server wasn't getting anything still. I was actually ready to go out the door when I thought to just double check reality, and that check kept me sitting right here: -

- Mac OS X command line encryption: "Well, you did me in good this time. Or maybe I did myself in, I don't know. Either way, I'm poached." That's a heck of a way to start a conversation, especially at 7:00 AM on a crackly cell phone. I recognized the voice, though. Long time customer, recent convert to Mac OS X. -

- I don't like answering the phone on Sunday, but I know it's probably someone with a real problem. I usually let it go to voice mail, and call back if it is a client with a serious issue, but for some reason I picked this one up. -

- The caller id on my cell phone said this was someone in California, but I didn't recognize the number. I was tied up that moment anyone, wrestling cables to a tape drive I was replacing, so I let it go to voice mail. -

- So I did. Al answered, very relieved that I had called back quickly. "Nobody can login?", I asked. "What's the message?"."Something about the terminal being locked. Funny thing though: Jim was just able to login, but nobody else can". -

- It's the weirdest thing.". The NT guy ran his fingers through his hair. There were actually three of them, but this one did most of the talking. "If the Internet goes down, they lose connections on the local network. I know a little Unix, so I checked the routing tables, and they all look fine. Even more strange, when this happens, I can still ping the Unix box." -